Melancholily
by Cherish Elle
Summary: Upon finding an old drawing from her childhood, Lily Evans spends an afternoon at Hogsmeade talking to James Potter, and trying to make sense of her jumbled thoughts as she contemplates on her relationship with him and his influence on her, her failed relationship with her sister, and the level of acceptance she'd come to reach, relating to both. Might become a 2 or 3 part story.


**Melancholily**

* * *

Even with the years gone by—twelve of them, in fact—she could still hear her declare, clear as day, in the most confident voice:

"When I grow up," with careful enunciation of every word, spoken in a forced ladylike manner that she'd heard some of their mother's friends use, "I'm going to be a princess and live in a castle. And I'll have balls and tea parties every day," she'd held her nose up and her lips pursed, continuing to balance back and forth on the swing, with Lily following her every move.

The ladylike tone of her voice dropped to her usual one, far more suitable for a little girl, "No boys will be invited, of course."

"Am I going to be invited?" she remembered asking, in both wonder and curiosity, her eyes never leaving her older sister's frame, taking in every movement and mannerism. To her, she was already a princess, or the closest thing Lily had seen to one.

"Well, of course, silly," Petunia had answered, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. "You're my sister, so you'll be a princess, too. Princesses are always invited."

She'd looked at her in amazement, and questioning, "You think I could be a princess?"

Without missing a beat and without a trace of the coldness and bitterness she showed around Lily nowadays, Petunia had said, "Yes. Why?" Her face wrinkled in confusion and a hint of disbelief. "Don't you want to be a princess?"

Maybe with a little less enthusiasm or certainty than Petunia, and maybe without as much higher regard for the dresses and balls and tea parties than for the fact her sister had said it, she knew she'd replied, "Yes, I do," and that they had spent the following afternoon running with their prettiest dresses in a field nearby and playing princesses, with only a vague awareness of the fact their mother was going to scold them for getting dirt and little rips on the hems of their skirts.

Even if that was a good while ago, Lily Evans vaguely wondered if, had she said two years ago in the Head's office that she wanted to become a princess, something magical—mugglelike magical—would've happened, and her sister would've appeared laughing next to her, speaking in that unnatural, ladylike manner:

"Don't be ridiculous, Lily. You already are a princess."

But Petunia Evans at that age no longer had any fondness or appreciation for princesses and fairytale tea parties, and Lily highly doubted Professor McGonagall would've found it even remotely amusing. Indeed, some things were just impossible—unlikely, she corrected herself—even in a world lead and ruled by magic. But even grown up as she was now, and fully aware of all the problems the world and her own self first and foremost, was confronting with, she couldn't stop hoping that since she was already living in a castle, becoming a princess wouldn't be much of a stretch.

But would that solve anything, really? Would Petunia like her more as a princess than she would if she wrote for the Prophet or worked at the Ministry? Would Petunia start smiling again like she did when she was eight if Lily promised her pretty gowns and balls and tea served in porcelain cups? Or would she scoff at her, looking as if she'd just smelt something rotten?

Lily sighed to herself, taking a sip of her Butterbeer. All around her there was commotion, but to her, being so entranced in her lovely little world of thoughts, it was as if someone had cast a Silencing Charm all around her, and everyone who whizzed by went in and out of her mind like they were never there in the first place.

In front of her, on the table, were scattered a copy of the Prophet, a couple rolls of parchment and on top of all, an old picture with two very crudely drawn girls sporting greenish skin and wearing dresses coloured in crayon. Underneath their stick-like figures, scribbled in kiddy handwriting: Princesses Petunia and Lily Evans. She'd found it in the bottom of her trunk two days ago while she was digging for a spare quill and it never left her gaze, even now as she was seated in the Three Broomsticks and working on essays.

The same essays she had abandoned repeatedly during the time she'd been there, only to keep looking at the picture and let herself carried away to the years she spent prancing around Cokeworth with Petunia.

"Princess Lily Evans," someone spoke from behind her, leaning their head over her shoulder to take a closer look, and she tensed, almost electrified. "I like the sound of that."

Before she could help herself, her hands flew forward and smacked on the hard surface of the table, in a clumsy attempt to cover up the picture. The Butterbeer she'd bought shook at the impact, but thankfully didn't fall over or spill—she let out a relieved breath, forgetting, for a moment, that there was someone right behind her.

James Potter's rather confused face came into view, as he ran a hand through his already messy hair. He awkwardly looked from her to the picture, a couple of times, his cheeks slightly redder than usual.

"Alright, so," he leaned against the unoccupied chair opposite her, a small smile tugging at his lips. "I'm guessing I wasn't supposed to see that?"

Lily let out a small, embarrassed laugh, fully aware of how ridiculous the scene must've looked like. She slowly uncovered the picture, glancing down at it for the briefest second before turning her attention back to James.

"No, it's not like that. It's just…" she trailed off as her brain scrambled to find the word most suitable to describe it. Embarrassing? Unimportant? Personal? All options seemed like the wrong thing to say, and Lily guessed, in the back of her mind, that there probably wasn't a right way to describe the actual importance of the picture and the state of her feelings.

Finally, she settled on, "It's just a silly picture I drew when I was younger."

James had already sat himself down at the table by then; the second he heard the explanation, he cocked an eyebrow at her—no doubt, in mild disbelief for her dismissive description, or lack thereof, but also curiosity. After a brief pause, in which he kept his eyes exclusively glued on Lily, he hesitantly extended his hand over the table with an unspoken request.

Lily, just as hesitantly, slid the drawing over the table in his direction, and hung back to watch him as he picked it up examined it, taking in all of his little quirks. Like, for instance, the way he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, instinctively, or the way he curled a corner of the paper with the index finger of his left hand, or the way his lips quirked in amusement and his eyebrows arched as he moved his eyes quickly then very slowly over the page, to take in the big picture before focusing on the details. Lily found great pleasure in watching people and focusing on their tiniest gestures to understand them better, to remember them by every single thing that can be remembered. It was in her previous year at school that she discovered James Potter was one of the persons she wanted to watch, to understand and keep in her memory; that James Potter, despite being a cause and object of Severus's rage and hatred and humiliation for so many years, was also complex and whole, and human. Curiosity led to discovery, led to affection, led to…

"How young?" his sudden question, although it didn't exactly startle her, forced her out of her reverie.

She furrowed her eyebrows, straining her mind for any sign of remembrance, "About five or six, I reckon."

This only served to widen his smile, crinkling the corners of his eyes, "It's a lot better than anything I've drawn at that age, you know," then his face turned serious, pensive and he ran his thumb over the contour of his chin, "Although the colour choice is a bit questionable."

Unable to help herself, Lily let out a rather noisy round of giggles, bringing back the smile to James's face as she reached out to jokingly smack his arm.

"I didn't have the right colour crayon," she explained, rather uselessly, although she wasn't even sure whether that had been the case or if little Lily had thought green skin would be a sensible artistic choice. "Green was the closest thing."

He rolled his eyes, carefully putting down the drawing on the table, right in front of him. "Sure, Lily."

"Weren't you just saying it's a lot better than any of _your _drawings, mister critical?" she raised her eyebrows, mocking offence.

"Well, yes, but at least I got the colours right."

"Prat, " a smile tugged at Lily's lips and before she knew it, they were both laughing quietly in the corner of the pub, pointing at Princess Lily's way too large hands and Princess Petunia's spaghetti arms, who Lily thought were quite accurately represented. After some time, James had started helping Lily with her previously abandoned essays, and had also taken a trip to the counter to grab himself a drink.

"So this is your sister then," James started at some point, holding his recently purchased Butterbeer in one hand, and Lily immediately picked up on the slightly apprehensive edge his voice had adopted. When she shifted her eyes to look at him, she found him staring resolutely at the crudely drawn picture—and more exactly, at the spaghetti-armed, blond-haired figure in a pink dress. "Petunia," he spoke her name as if testing it on his tongue and looked up at her for confirmation.

Thinking back, Lily could remember the times when hearing her sister's name spoken by other people would have her ready to smile and babble words of praise and love and affection, but also when it would have her eyes sting, her throat closing up, her heart aching and her mind wondering about things that she'd never thought she'd be wondering about.

This time, however, it did nothing but strengthen the bout of nostalgia that had overwhelmed her the second she'd found the picture. Rather absentmindedly, she nodded in agreement.

James was silent for a while, having gone back to inspecting the picture, "You don't talk much about her."

"We're not exactly on good terms," she made a pause, "Ever since I started Hogwarts. We used to be really close."

Another pause. She looked at James for a little longer than necessary, taking in the way his eyebrows had furrowed and the corners of his mouth had dropped into a serious line, something that didn't happen many times if there were people around to witness it. Most importantly, though, his eyes sparked with a whirlwind of emotions Lily was too scared to interpret. She lowered her own, focusing on the half-written papers on the table, and began to talk.

She told him, first of all, about little Petunia who wanted to be a princess, then Petunia who was afraid, and jealous, and bitter towards that awful boy Lily would hang around with, and Petunia who was obsessively Muggle, who cut her food into sharp squares and all but counted every bite.

"She thinks magic is freakish, you know," she told him, rather calmly, and watched his fists clench and unclench on the table. "She's happier this way, with her Muggle fiancé, and thinking a world without magic, a world without me, is a better world."

"And what doyou think?" he asked, almost instantly. There was a certain irritation he was trying to hide beneath those words, but also a typically James Potter-like nonchalance with which he said them, as if he was asking her about the weather, but being displeased about the current state of it.

"I think," Lily took a breath, as the overwhelming feeling of exactly how much of her she'd uncovered to him came back and all but squarely hit her in the chest. She felt slightly dizzy, overflowing with melancholy and feelings that she'd finally let loose; she couldn't remember the last time she'd talked about herself so freely and so much. It felt fantastic, relieving, but also scary and shameful, all at the same time—despite her brain protesting at how wrong it was, it still felt right.

"I think it's unfair that I can't have both," she finally said, trailing a finger up and down her empty Butterbeer bottle. "Magic and my sister, that is."

She felt an equal amount of relief and guilt at having admitted so much to James—that she was just as hopeless and greedy as every other person. That she couldn't let go of things in the past as easily as others could; that in the end, she was just a caricature of mismatching crayons.

A soft warmth enveloped the hand that wasn't busy trailing patterns on the cool glass—she looked down to see that James's longer fingers had wrapped around hers, not too tightly to cause discomfort, but tight enough to be reassuring. This wasn't the first time she'd held hands with James Potter—far from it, actually—but somehow, it felt like it was the most significant one.

"I think," he spoke loudly and more clearly than she had, and when she looked his way, she saw that he was staring straight at her, looking both uncomfortable and at ease at the same time. "That you'd deserve both, and that it's not wrong to hold onto it."

And once again, Lily found herself smiling. She was not perfect, and nor was James, and nor was Petunia. They were all complex, and whole, and human. The small acceptance of that fact seemed enough for today—it was, perhaps, a more effective way of changing things than wishing for a miracle. Holding onto it and taking it step by step, making room for her own path towards her goal. Being a princess involved more than pretty dresses and fancy tea cups to drink from. Being a sister, too, perhaps held more onto it than it was expected. And if Lily hadn't given up on being a princess just yet, maybe Petunia hadn't given up on being a sister, in her own way. And maybe it really wasn't wrong to think she could have both just yet. And maybe James Potter, above being all of the things she'd called him over the years, was wiser and kinder than a lot of people would take time to notice.

"I think you're giving me too much credit," she found herself saying, to his very amused surprise. The intensity of the moment was gone, even if a trace of nostalgia and contemplation still remained deeply embedded within her. "And I also think it's very unlikely I'll get anything done at this rate," she pointed down at her essays, far from being finished.

This, if possible, made James smile even more.

"You didn't say impossible," he said, almost smugly.

"You must've heard wrong," she told him, seriously, as she got up from the table.

It was during the time they've started becoming friendlier when he'd said it: 'I don't believe in impossible, Lily. We can use a lot of words instead. Personally, I prefer unlikely, or maybe improbable.' And Lily, always overanalysing and contemplating things, couldn't make herself break down that belief of his. Deep down, she knew that she, herself, wanted to believe some things really weren't impossible—just unlikely, or improbable.

(Like becoming a princess, or going back to being a sister, but maybe she'd already thought about that too much for one day.)

"Last time I've checked, I had pretty good hearing," James countered, getting up himself and starting to help Lily gather up her things from the table.

"Must've been a long time ago," Lily mused, with the most concerned expression she could manage to do in the circumstances. Grabbing the last roll of parchment and thrusting it into her bag, she grabbed the rather miffed looking James Potter by the arm. "Come on. Let's get you to Madam Pomfrey for a check-up."

He freed his arm from her grasp and instead reached down to slip his fingers through hers, and she squeezed back just as eagerly.

"If you insist."

And as they walked towards the exit, just as they were about to go past the threshold, James spun her around on a whim and softly pressed his lips to hers. It was little moments like these when Lily was reminded that no matter how much time she spent analysing and memorizing every single thing about James, he was still too impulsive for her to predict. But that was fine, because it wasn't impossible to do—just very difficult. She would just have to be a little more curious.

Because, yes, curiosity led to discovery, led to affection, led to…

Love.


End file.
